Chat LIVE With Ralph (DSO)!

Working properly. Hey, how is everyone today? It's been a while since I've done one of these, uh, lives. I say a while, I don't know, like a week and a half or something like that, which is a while for me. I apologize if you guys can hear some noise outside my office door here. We get some folks being a little loud out there. Maybe they heard me say that, slamming doors and such. So welcome everybody, welcome, welcome, welcome. Give a little bit for people to show up here. Let me make sure all is kosher over here on Facebook. Let me refresh. Yeah, looking good. Cool. For those that don't know me, my name is Ralph Brewer. Sorry, wish it was something a little cooler than that. I go by the name, the fake internet name if you will, of DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over, and you can learn more at dadstartingover.com. Search for Dad Starting Over on any of the social media pages that you may follow. I'm on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or X, whatever you want to call it. Look for Dad Starting Over. If you could give— do me a favor, give me a follow, subscribe, a like, however it works wherever you are watching this, I would greatly appreciate it. If you could share this live feed as you are watching it, I greatly appreciate it. Um, let me know, uh, where you are joining me from here today. It looks like we already got some folks coming in. There was somebody on YouTube YouTube that calls themselves Something From Nothing. That's a first. Saying good morning. Well, good morning to you, SFN. It's hard to say. Something From Nothing. Where are you joining us from today? It's always interesting to see where everyone is, oh, joining from. We've had folks from all, literally every corner of the earth, which is always cool to see. All over the US, Canada, Australia. We had South Africa last time. You know what we don't have a lot of is South America. When I look at all my stats, all my analytics for YouTube and the website and so forth, we don't reach much in the way of South America. Probably 'cause we don't have a lot of Spanish-speaking material. We do have some, but not a lot. And I know Brazil, they speak Portuguese, Portuguesa down there. We don't have anything in the Portuguese language. Maybe one day, never know. Carl, joining us from Amsterdam, New York. And Something from Nothing says he is in St. Paul, Minnesota. So welcome, gentlemen. Welcome, welcome. And I am joining you live here from— hold on a second, let me see, do I have it— from— I always love my sound effects— Texas, Plano, Texas. Bearded Kilt Racing says, is this where the cool kids hang out? Yes, indeed. I think I know who that is. Is that you, Justin? 'Cause I think you're into the racing thing, and the kilt throwing things around thing. What's that called? You'd think I would know this. Uh, Highland Games, I think is what it's called. Oh, shitballs, we have a spam thing. Uh, somebody credit Ghana. Oh God, how do I get rid of this? I apologize, we have a spam message. Oh, it looks like some— I go over here to Facebook to get rid of it, looks like it's already done. Let me get rid of that spam message. There we go. There we are. Cool. Yes, Justin. Welcome, Justin. Justin is a member, part of the Dad Starting Over team. Highland Games. That's right. I knew that. And welcome, Justin. And welcome all you fine folks from all corners of the earth. Like I said before, name's Ralph Brewer. Dad Starting Over. DadStartingOver.com. Some of you watching this may know of me via a book I wrote. Some years ago. Uh, the first version of that book came out in 2017, and then the second version in 2020. And I'd like to start on a third version here soon, just haven't got around to doing it. Been super busy boy. And that book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix. Um, for those that don't know, real quick summary, um, I got divorced some 11, going on 12 years ago now. It was a really big emotional deal for me, a traumatic deal for me, and all the stuff that went with it. So I, I started up as a form of, I guess you say, self-therapy, if you will. One of the things I love to do prior to marriage and kids and all that was writing. So what a lot of divorced dudes do when they go through a trauma like that is, let's rediscover my old self. Let's go back to some of the old stuff I used to do. One of those things was writing. So I started up a blog, and I found, uh, the domain of dadstartingover was available, so I purchased it for next to nothing, dadstartingover.com. And I wrote on a variety of different topics. It seems to be the one topic that got everybody's attention. I mean, I wrote on parenting and fitness and finance stuff and I mean, all my thoughts on the game of life, starting over as a dude. And, uh, but when I talked about, you know, sex and marriage and my thoughts on the matter and comparing it to then what was then my dating life and everything else, that got the most attention to the point where somebody suggested I write a book on that topic. So I did, and that book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix, and it sold a lot of copies, especially considering it was a self-published deal. I didn't go through a formal publisher. Like Penguin Books or Random House or whatever. It's a self-published deal and it's available on Amazon. It's available on Apple Books. I do a video, or audio version rather, on Audible. Apple Books you can get through there. Scribd, or Scribd, or Scribdy, however you pronounce it, has it on there as well. Basically anywhere you can find books retail, you can probably find The Dead Bedroom Fix, as well as my 3 other books that I've written. I don't mention them much because All of the other 3 books, their sales combined don't equal the sales from my one book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, believe it or not. The other books are called Divorce Panic, Real Talk: No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men, and Red Flags. So check out— if you do a search for DSO, Dad Starting Over, online, you'll probably find it. You can find links to all these at dadstartingover.com. Go to Amazon, do a search. If you find Dead Bedroom Fix, it'll probably link you to my other books. But check them out. And, uh, the audiobooks do very well. I sell probably more of those than anything, and it is yours truly doing the narration. So I've had some people say that they like my soothing voice. If so, that's me reading them, so you're welcome. Um, but anywho, uh, after writing that book and doing all things Dad Starting Over, um, I decided to start up a private members-only part of the website, if you will, part of the organization. And we call that the DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over, the DSO fraternity. And within that private group, we get together live for Zoom meetings. We record all the Zoom meetings so you can listen back to them on your phone. Pretty cool stuff. We have, uh, private discussion forums where we get online, discuss. Again, if I didn't make this clear, this is for men only. And, uh, we have a DSO fraternity podcast. We have articles Uh, we do get together in person, which by the way, coming up here Thursday of this week, we are getting together for the 4th annual what we call Bro Fest, which is basically the members conference gathering for our folks here in the States. And we're meeting for the 4th time, 4th year in a row in New Orleans Thursday. So if you'd like to join us— too late, we've already got our membership, or rather the Oh, what's that, attendance all squared away, got the event venues all squared away. We're gonna meet for cool, what's it called, a rock and bowl, bowling, drinks, food all in one place. That'd be kinda cool on Thursday night, then we get together for presentations, lunch, and then we have dinner at a brewery later that night on Friday night. That'll be cool, and then Saturday, more presentations, breakfast, lunch, and then we get together for dinner at a big crawfish boil. That's gonna be kind of cool. Not a fan— I call it the water bugs. Not a fan of like lobster and crawfish and stuff like that. So for the guys that are going to be attending, you can eat all those you want. I'll be eating probably a burger on Saturday. Um, Scott Powell says, hello DSO, I'm a new member, uh, about to join your numbers and in my 50s. Well, welcome Scott. When you say new member, do you mean of the DSO fraternity, of our private group? I say that because a lot of guys just get on the public Facebook group, for example, and they think that's the group— or the public Facebook page, rather. Just to clarify, if you're a company, organization, whatever, you can have a page on Facebook. Like Nike, McDonald's, Apple— they all have a page on Facebook. And anyone and everyone can get on there and see whatever's posted by that public page to promote their material. And anyone can comment on it. That's why if you go on the Dad Starting Over page on Facebook, you're like, "There's a lot of ladies on here." There's a lot of everyone on there. It's a public page, but we have a subsection, a private section over here just for men. So if you're looking for that, that's probably more up your alley. If you're looking for no ladies in the discussion, we have our DSO fraternity. Go to dadstartingover.com. There's information out there about it, or you can go directly to dsofraternity.com. Kind of takes you to the same place on the Dad Starting Over page. And Bearded Kit Racing, AKA Justin, he's going to be there with us on Thursday. Says best time of the year. Darren says, hey brother. Hey brother. And Scott says, just got on the Facebook page. Well, check out the DSO fraternity, my man. You're missing out if you want some man-only stuff. That's where all the cool stuff happens. But we got Alan starting things off with a question. What percentage of couples do you think will make it to marriage? Oh, okay. So you're just a couple dating. What percentage of those will make it to marriage? I don't know. And what percentage do you think will remain married from your research and insights of romantic dynamics between men and women? Well, you're just asking all kinds— this is a very man question, by the way. You know what men love? Stats, numbers. Give it to me black and white. What are the chances? You know, I have guys do something— I, I was about to say as silly, that's kind of mean of me to say, but I get the reason behind this— as silly as, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, how many times per week of sexual activity between a couple is normal? It's like, dude, I don't know. Depends on who you ask. Some guys say it's got to be every day. Some guys say once a month, and I'm cool with that. Really, some men think that. That may be kind of weird to me and some others listening to that. Every day may be kind of weird to people listening to that. It's all over the place, dude, whatever you think. Same goes for, um, what, what do I think, you know, what percentage of couples get married? You know, there's a bigger picture question, and I'm going to do a presentation on this at BroFest coming up here, and, uh, I think my— that presentation will be Friday morning. I'm going to talk about No, rather Saturday morning I'm going to do a presentation on why is marriage so hard, quote unquote hard, difficult to maintain. And just to give a little preview of that, one of the things in that presentation I will talk about is that you will often hear from people saying marriage as an institution, as a concept, is really anti or goes against our biology as human beings. It's not a quote natural process. It's not a natural thing. It's just been kind of forced upon us. Etc., etc. Well, if that's the case, guys, basically through all of recorded history, across all socioeconomic barriers, we have people basically pair bonding and forming a union, one person with another one person, whether they call that formally marriage or whatever. It seems like every culture all over the world does this thing. We call it, you know, in a Western world, marriage, and we even get the law involved and religion involved and everything else. Well You know, whether it's a tribe somewhere in Africa, South America, or guy in New York City or whatever, there seems to be a draw to say, you're with me and I'm with you and we're going to do this life thing together. Like I say, whether they call that marriage or not, to the point where it's like, um, when you look at history, they say an estimated cross-culturally something like 90-some-odd percent of women in their lifetime will get married. 90. That's no joke, seriously. And then I think it was the high 80s for men. So we have a— we tend to gravitate towards that. And Alan, presume you're in the US or some Western world like myself, we do that in the form of some formalized marriage. So we tend to— we seem to have a natural inclination to come together with one person. Now you're asking what percentage? Don't know. Um, and then what percentage will remain married? Again, that's all over the place, depends who you ask. You know, there's a, there's a stat that's thrown around a lot, which is like about half the time you're going to end up not married, you're going to end up divorced about half the time. Well, some say that's kind of an antiquated, misunderstood stat. I don't know. I guess to say, does it matter, Alan? Are you trying to say, you know, I'm considering getting married, how realistic is that? How is this gonna— is this gonna work out or not? Um, maybe I should just stay, you know, as non-married and dating with this person, or should, should, should, and what are this— what are the chances? It doesn't really matter. What do you want to do, dude? You know, if you're going into it going mathematically, I don't— it's— you're probably looking at the wrong way. Um, but then there's all kinds of stats or, or, uh, all kinds of science behind what happens to the sexual energy between a couple after a long period of time together. Hint: tends to go down. While some people say that's very, very important to me, and as a result of what I know now after, you know, some people say after 1 or 2 failed marriages, I'm just going to go ahead and continue to date. And if I make a really good strong bond with one person, I'm going to remain with them, but we don't need to formalize it and get the law involved in the form of marriage and all the other stuff. Cool, whatever. I'm hearing that more and more. Um, Alan says he sees a lot of people in his life breaking up more than getting together. What do you think about that, Alan? Is that Bother you? Does that make you not want to go through the process of hitching yourself formally to somebody? What about just, like I said, what about just saying we're just together? That's all there is to it. Um, well, Alan's just spitting out lots of questions here, my man. What do I think of the Gottman's Four Horsemen theory? I think it's really interesting, and they have a, um, they have a lot of, uh, science or Stats from what I understand to back that up in the form of, um, the Gottman folks have seen a lot of couples in front of them over the years and they've started to see trends and what is it that breaks up a marriage. And then they have the, what they call the Four Horsemen, when— and I cannot rattle them off off the top of my head. I am familiar with them, but it seems they have a lot of data to back it up. Cool. You know what I've learned over the years? There's a lot of ways to skin a cat with this whole relationship thing. I can talk to this therapist who says that they've, you know, chatted with hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of couples, and they will say, I see a certain trend amongst my folks, and here's what I see. Even then, with all that data that they have to back it up, there is some— there's somewhat of a bias to their data, probably in form of, what if— if this is a marriage therapist in Japan, they're probably going to see different trends than a marriage therapist in Iowa. They'll just see a different subset of people, different cultures, different norms and so forth. So they may have a different way of looking at it. So it's, it's, it's all over the place. And I'm sure maybe even the Gottmans have a bit of a bias to, to their, uh, to their samples and to their data. Mr. Darren says 26 years married. Oh wow. But 4 years separated. She is all about the silent treatment. Had a failed mediation last week. She wants to use and possession of— she wants use and possession of the home, um, for 2+ years, and she wants me out for no reason at all and to pay for everything financially. These legal fees are draining us, and my business is about 50% less than normal, and we have 5 months of savings, and I feel it's inevitable that we must sell— to sell the home with this divorce. It's upsetting to learn the courts can favor the idea based on stability of the kids. Hmm. And he says, but a father being removed from the home is the most unstable thing a child can face, along with a divorce. Yeah, you know, a lot— you're saying a mouthful here. And then at the end, it says, any advice to stay emotionally stable through this tough time? Um, But again, big mouthful here. Um, you know, you're going on about the legalities and it's not fair, it's not fair. Well, let me just say, just cut that out. Doesn't matter. What are you going to petition the laws and the courts to change certain laws to make it a certain way? You're not going to do that single-handedly. You're not going to probably do that in your lifetime. Is that my way of saying just give up, dude? No. I mean, if you have legal reason and your attorney that you trust, that's important, your attorney says the thing that your ex is asking for is legally not, it's not gonna float. I strongly recommend you don't fold with this, you don't agree to this, we should go back with this. And then you go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, it's stupid. I do not have any personal experience with this. My breakup, again, some dozen years ago was basically my ex saying, I want out, you can have the house, whatever. Really, it was that easy for me. And I had the kids most of the time there for a while, and now it's settled out after years of being just basically right down the middle, half the time, 50/50 split with the kiddos and all the expenses and everything else. So I got off pretty easy when it comes to that kind of thing. Um, you know, there is some thought as to— you look at the costs of it's fair that we split this asset, or whatever it may be, in this way. You know, legally it looks like we should get half of, let's say, equity in the home, for example. And she says, I just want you out of here, beat it. And you're like, but I'm, I'm due a certain amount of equity in this home. I'm not just going to leave this home. Let's say you're owed like $100,000 or something like that. You know, it's— there's $200,000 of equity in the home. Let's say I'm owed $100 grand of this. She wants me just to give up the $100 grand and walk away. And here we are bouncing back and forth with attorneys. We've I've already spent $35,000 of attorney fees. It's going to drain me. It's draining me of my life. It's draining me. There is a school of thought of, dude, just sit and look big picture at this. You're going to spend how many more tens of thousands of dollars to fight this? You're going to pull out your hair if you have any left. I don't, obviously. And, um, it's going to cause you a lot of stress and a lot of— set aside the ego and just say, you know what, wife, house is yours. If I do this, will you in turn sign over everything and we can end this fight? That may be worth it, dude. I don't know, maybe worth looking into that or kind of digest that a little bit and see if that makes any sense for you. Just to say, fine, if it means the end of all this and I can move on with my life, there's the home and I'll just go get me an apartment somewhere. You know, you're a dude. A lot of men don't like to hear this because there's something very attractive about the whole victim mindset. But let me tell you this, Statistically— don't beat me up for saying this, I'm just miming or repeating stats that are out there. You can Google and look for yourself, dude. In the long run, let's say 5 years from now, I put you two up against each other. Let's say post-divorce, 5 years post-divorce. You've got— you've ironed out everything, the financials, the legal, and everything else, and you're done. And then you go back and you go, let's reconvene, let's see how everybody's doing 5 years from now. Probably you're going to end up better shape than she is, believe it or not. Even after giving this up, giving that up with the legal fees, your business taking a hit, yada yada yada. Even so, after 5, 10 years from now, you will probably end up being better off than what she is financially. The stats show us men tend to do better in the long run post-divorce than what women do. Now, a lot of men hear that, want to punch me in the face because, do you realize what I'm going through right now? She's taking this, she's taking that, she's wanting half this, she's Even that, even with all that, dude, we tend to do better post-divorce financially than what women do. That's not me saying just so just suck it up and pay whatever. I'm just saying, trying to, you know, show you the, the, the gold at the end of the rainbow, I guess, the, the silver lining here, that you will probably be okay. You're a business owner, it's money, you will make more. Go to a 1, 2-bedroom apartment, it's not going to be, it's not the dream home you wanted,. But in the end, after it's all said and done, if you want to look at it from a contest point of view, you'll end up winning. Probably you'll be fine. It may be something to, like I say, house, fine, here you go. And we're done with the whole process. Cool. Now I can start over with a clean slate. And your business, your, your finances in the long run, your mental health and well-being. Will probably all be better off as a result of taking that course of action, just saying, "Fine, let me start over with a clean slate as long as we can just end this whole stupid process." Does she, quote, "win"? Whatever, fine, sure. In the end though, dude, like I say, you'll probably be the one to win. Now, how do you deal with all this emotionally through all of this? You know, I hear a lot of guys saying that, Um, how do I deal? How do I deal? How do I deal? And a lot of men that I talk to going through this, it's kind of their first major life holy shit. Maybe they lost a parent, which is, you know, no, not a small thing, or loved one or something like that, lost a job. But this is the biggest major holy shit moment for them, and they're like, and this hurts and this sucks. And I wake up every morning going, wow, still hurts, still sucks. When's this going to stop? How do I deal with this? And you don't want to hear this. I've talked about this before in other videos, that there's a book that I read to my daughter. I remember as a kid we used to do this little song about going on a bear hunt, and they would say like, you come to all these different obstacles in the song, in the little story, and you come to some forest and like, you can't go around it, can't go over it, gotta go through it. And then you go through the forest and you come to another obstacle, and then at the end you see the bear and you get scared and you have to go back through all these obstacles again. It's a very big life lesson kind of thing. Can't avoid it, gotta go through it. So dude, you're gonna go through hell and it's gonna suck, and there are gonna be days that you're gonna be like, I don't know if I can do this. Yeah, you can, and you will, and it will suck, and it will suck. And you know how you feel right now? There are gonna be days where it sucks even worse. Why am I saying all this? I'm being realistic, because guess what? At the end of the day, years down the line when you're going through all this, and you will get over the hump, and it will be better, believe it or not, you're going to go— this, I know you're not going to believe this, but you're going to say, I'm kind of glad I went through all that. I learned a lot during all that. That's what everybody that goes through some major life thing, you know, somebody that has endured some kind of like life-altering disease, cancer, something like that, lost all their money, and then you see them later in life when they're doing much better and you're like, if you could change anything would you change that chapter of your life? And you're like— and they're like, you know, actually, no, that's made me who I am. I learned a lot during that time. I went through it. I saw what I was made of. And in the end, I'm like, if I could put up with that and come out smelling pretty good at the end, looking pretty good, I'm a pretty tough dude. I got it going on. Nothing can stop me. Life just said, what do you Oh yeah, take this. And I was just like, what else you got? Um, that's the attitude you got to take through this. It's going to suck, but in the end— what, what, is there a way to expedite this process, to, um, the healing process, to get over this quicker? That's what expedite means, to get over this quicker. Um, yeah, if there's some advice I can give you in that realm, it would be to limit contact with the ex as much as possible. Sounds like she, she knows the way to poke at you and hurt you and and, and, you know, make you quote-unquote suffer. That's not unusual for these circumstances. Seems like once you're down, they just want to kick you while you're down even more. So how do you stop that process? You don't allow them to kick you. You don't unnecessarily contact them. You don't unnecessarily respond to contact that's not about the kids or finances or whatever. You just let it go in one ear and out the other, and eventually they're like, oh, this guy's no fun. And they stop pestering you and they stop contacting you. Some people, understandably, I know this may not be necessarily your situation since this separation's been going on for so long, still have very much an emotional attachment to their ex. And those little touches and contacts, whatever you wanna call it, don't help with splitting that connection that they have. You know, they're still very much, there's still a part of them that's still in love and still wishes for this, you know, relationship to continue. And the only way to break the spell that you're under, so to speak, that addiction to them in essence, is to stop with the contact as much as humanly possible. And then you'll notice a day goes by, you don't think about them. 2 days, 3 days, a week, a month. And then you're like, oh, the spell has been broken. And then you can— you're more apt to continue on in life and, and do things in a healthy manner, as opposed to continuously being in contact with them. I often use the analogy of you're an alcoholic, you don't get better by taking just a little sip of alcohol every now and then. You can't do that. You have to put the bottle down and get the hell away from it, and then you can break that addiction. Um, so hang tough, buddy. And Scott says that your mental and emotional health are the most important thing. It's true. Um, if it means coughing up a few extra bucks— I know it's more than a few extra bucks potentially— and getting away from the situation and starting over, then do it. That's my advice. And CLD Gaming says, hi DSO, frat member here. Any recommendations on keeping positive after 5 months of no intimacy? I've given up on initiating, the ball's in her court now. I wish I could get to New Orleans for BroFest. Yeah, I wish you could join us too. Um, and he follows up to say that he's been working on his physical fitness and his mindfulness, focusing on my life and the kids. So have you, CLD Gaming, resigned yourself to the fact that this relationship is going to continue regardless? 5 months of intimacy, as you know, if you've been watching my stuff, you know better than anybody. A long-term sexual, what's the word I'm looking for, drought. A sexless marriage for a long period of time, and that's up for debate on what exactly is a long period of time. Everyone has their own definition of that. One week could be too long for one guy, and another guy says it wasn't until the 1-year mark that I finally woke up and realized, oh, this is weird. But anyway, regardless, it's what I call the canary in the coal mine or you've got some pretty deep-seated issues going on here between the two of you. One or both of you have some issues that are throwing a grenade in the room of this relationship, and you're waking up to the fact like, oh, this is no good. And here you are going, um, how do I keep positive during all this? Should you keep positive during all this? What is— what does keeping positive mean exactly? Does it mean looking the other way? Does it mean ignoring the giant elephant in the room? Does it mean recognizing like, wow, this is really broken. This is, we're really as a couple, just really, this is no bueno, this sucks. And I've done my part in trying to reach out to her. I've done my part trying to mend, you know, the broken bridge between the two of us for whatever reason, a lot of resentments, personal baggage that one or both of you bring to the table, whatever has caused this rift between the two of you. And you're doing your part to try and, um, mend that, and she's just sitting there with her arms crossed saying, buzz off, buzz off, buzz off. And you're like, well— and I see you've done what a lot of men do in this position. I've given up. Ball's in her court now, dude. We both know nothing's gonna happen. She has shown you. What do you suddenly expect her tomorrow just to go, you know what, after 5 months of nothing, I finally realized, uh, You're a catch, dude. Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. You're an awesome husband. Let's get it on. Probably not gonna happen. She's probably gonna be like, oh good, he's left me alone. Phew, that's one less thing to worry about. I'm inferring a lot, I'm assuming a lot, but that's what I've seen typically in these kind of preoccupied anxious guy, avoidant woman. That may very well be your dynamic in your relationship, don't know, but that's what I hear more often than not. And more often than not, when the guy backs off— let me preface this— sometimes it quote works. Sometimes it's like, oh good, he's not such an anxious-y, hang-on, clingy guy. Now I, um, have room to breathe emotionally here, which allows me to come more to center, which I'm a better behaving person after that. That happens. But that's not the majority that I've seen. The majority of time what I've seen is that the, oh good, he left me alone, now I can stop pretending to like him in that way. Now I can— I don't have to feel pressured. Now we can go back to being this roommate situation. Kind of sucks if you're the healthy sexual human being— emotional human being, rather. Um, not good. So, um, I'm missing some comments here. Trying not to pout and having the quote non-healthy talk. So have you had Um, the old healthy sit-down with her. Just say, we both know what's going on here. What do you say, wife? You want to join me on fixing this? Let's both get some help with this. Have you had that discussion with her? And if so, was she receptive to it? And if not, what more do you need, dude? Um, I, you know, you say 5 months, but I have a feeling that the problems in your relationship have gone on for longer than that. Um, and Scott says he has to bail. So see ya, Scott. Thank you for joining us. Um, but anyway, and you admit that yes, it's very much the avoidant to anxious relationship. Um, for those that don't know, who are new to this whole relationship talk thing, have just discovered this and don't know what we're talking about with this anxious avoidant thing, and for those that do know, bear with me as I give a quick overview of this. Um, psychologists, of which I am not, I'm not a mental health professional of any kind, Bald guy microphone, one of many on the internet. Yay. But, um, psychologists came up with years ago, um, this— you know, much of what we learn in this realm of psychology is basically smart people that study the behavior in human beings, and they say, you know, we've started to notice patterns and we can start to categorize people and their actions in certain ways, and that helps us to figure out ways to treat and, um, better understand what we're seeing here. And years ago, somebody came up with the idea of, you know what, I'm noticing that, um, people express— uh, how to best say this— by virtue of, of what they dealt with as children with mom and dad, we notice that they in turn attach to their romantic partners later in life a certain way. And we've categorized the way they attach to their romantic partners in certain ways by calling them either preoccupied or anxious— same thing. That's one end of the spectrum. Then we have the other end of the spectrum, which are these avoidant types. And the, um, anxious preoccupied types can be man or woman. It's not a gendered thing. Um, when it comes to my material at Dad Starting Over, I tend to attract guys who are of the anxious preoccupied bent, the, the, that persona, um, that category. Why? Because it's the anxious preoccupied people that tend to seek out information on how to fix a relationship. They're the ones that are looking at the YouTube videos, listening to the podcast, downloading or buying the books, downloading or buying the courses, signing up for the boot camps, joining the private men's groups, and so forth. They just want to fix this situation. It's broken. They recognize it's broken. They're not about to sit back and just say, oh well, and move on with their life. No, they're going to fix this, damn it. That's typically your anxious preoccupied kind of mindset, while the avoidant is basically of the mindset of, oh dear God, can we just please stop talking about this? It's always something with you. It's always, let's talk about this, let's talk about that, let's listen to this podcast. I just want to live, damn it. I just want to exist like normal people. Do we have to always talk about this stuff? They have a point. The preoccupied anxious person has a point too, because they're over there saying, yeah, if I didn't bring this up we would have zero attachment to each other at all. We would just be two separate people living under the same roof. We don't touch, we don't talk, we certainly don't have sex. We don't have any of this good, normal, secure people stuff. Anxious guy just wants a nice secure relationship. Avoidant, from what I've seen— I don't mean to demonize the avoidant type people, by the way. The avoidant types tend to be men more so than women, but not always, obviously. Um, They both have their point, so to speak. They both have their, their, their, uh, point of reference, their perspective on all this, and there's validity to both. But they both need to come more to center, to what we call the secure. And when it comes to working on a relationship, the anxious person tends to win the trophy for the person who wants to work the most. They're ready to like, whatever, they got their journal out, you know, they're at their the marriage counselor with the pen and paper, literally, and writing stuff down as the counselor's saying, uh-huh, what's my homework, Mr. Counselor? What do I need to do before our meeting next week? Well, the avoidant person's just like, ah, they can't wait to get out of here. And like, God. And then here comes the anxious person at the end to go, I can't wait to work on this stuff that the counselor told me. And the anxious or the avoidant's like, oh God, yeah, uh-huh, yeah, I can't wait. And they don't do their homework. And that's a very typical scenario. It's from the anxious point of view, there's not much to work with there. You're trying and trying, and the anxious people— depends on their severities of this, you know. Some are super, super anxious, some not so much. On a scale of 1 to 10, some people are like a 2 or 3, while others are like 11 out of 10. They're super anxious, hangy-on-y to the point of being codependent in a very unhealthy way, and they don't let go no matter what. And Ironically, it's not unheard of for the avoidant types to be involved in extramarital affairs, for example. They go elsewhere for the love and affection, which makes no sense to the anxious person, but not unheard of. And sometimes Mr. or Ms. Anxious will discover that. Wow, the person that I've been with who's so resistant to any kind of love and affection is screwing around. So instead of taking the message and saying, I guess it's time to move on, Mr. or Ms. Codependent often says, I'm just going to double down on my efforts. This just shows that I've really failed as a partner. I've driven them to that. I got to hang around and keep working on this. They don't get the message. And I'm hoping, CLD Gaming, that is not you, and that's not necessarily your situation, but not unheard of. DSO, your book was great. Sadly, I needed it 20 years ago. I assume, Rick, Pardon me, this is Rick from Facebook. I assume you're talking about The Dead Bedroom Fix. I mentioned this earlier, it's my most popular book by far, so people call it your book. They don't realize I've written 4 total, but that's the one that's outsold all of the others combined. So, well, Rick, I'm glad. I hear this quite often. This is a version of the comment I hear most often, which is, where were you 20 years ago? Where were you 30 years ago? Or another one which sparked one of my other books, a comment I'll hear is, where was this shit when we were kids? How come nobody ever taught us this stuff? So I wrote a book actually aimed at young men and it's called Real Talk: No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men. Check that out, Real Talk. You can learn more at dadstartingover.com. Do a search for Real Talk on Amazon, Google it. You'll find it. There's audio versions if your kiddo prefers audio. You can listen to it together in the car. I had somebody that did that on a road trip, listened to the book with their kiddo. It's not that long of a book. Um, I don't know how many hours total to listen to the whole thing, probably 3 or so, I think. Don't quote me on that. Um, CLD Gaming says, your explanation sounds so accurate for me. Even my 19-year-old son is seeing that dynamic in his parents' marriage, and he called me out on it on the weekend. It's so interesting that a young man can see it, my friend. Writing is more than on the wall. There's, you know, they say writing's on the wall. That means like it's subtly, it's, it's up there, you just gotta look. Not only is the writing on the wall, somebody's sitting there with a megaphone in your face yelling at you repeatedly. Your own son saying, Dad, I love you, but this is effed up, man. What keeps you around, brother? Even your own son is saying this is effed up. Your 19-year-old son, basically an adult, young adult, is saying, Dad, this is messed up. Called you out on it. Boy loves you, he's worried about you. He doesn't want to see, uh, Dad going through that, or maybe even Mom going through that. Maybe just sees that you're both wildly incompatible in that way. Again, I'm not pushing for divorce, I'm not pro-divorce, I'm not anti-marriage by any stretch of the imagination. With these scenarios, not to doubt anything that you're saying, CLD Gaming, but, um, we're only hearing one side of the story. And I have learned over the years, occasionally I will hear both sides. That's pretty rare, but there have been in the past where I'll hear from man, and then woman will come along saying, I understand that you've spoken to John, um, I'm wife in said situation. I wanted to give you my perspective on this. And it always, always, in the few instances that I've had of this, totally changes the picture of the situation. I go, oh yeah, he didn't mention That little thing. He didn't mention there was a secretary that he screwed around with 10 years ago. That kind of changes the dynamic here quite a bit. He didn't mention his gambling problem. He didn't mention all these sources of resentment, why the wife has split from him emotionally and physically, etc., etc. So maybe there's more going on here. Don't know. Maybe not. A lot of the time it's just a very sex-averse, intimacy-averse wife. Very, very avoidant. With a guy who has a lot of needs, and you're caught in this vicious circle because there's Mr. Anxious, who's like, wants nothing more than to have a wife to hold and touch and, and squeeze and, you know, and show his affection to and get some in return. But he is with this woman who is ironically not wired in that way and is wired exactly the opposite. So he goes without, which builds this need, which builds this desire, which causes her to be even more repulsed, and they're just caught in this vicious circle and it doesn't go anywhere. And, uh, T-Dub says— oh, you're saying Real Talk is around 2 hours 56 minutes, so about 3 hours. I was right. Um, T-Dub says, when my oldest asked me after one of, uh, we— I think you mean, uh, one of our raging tantrums— he said, quote, why do you put up with that? I realized I was not crazy and I needed to take action. Shore up your boundaries. Yeah. Hmm. And Brett says, one thing I think about is I would have felt differently had I paid closer attention to the red flags and left. Um, yeah. Why do you think, Brett? And for those that are in today's call, boy, do I hear that all the time. It's another version of what the other gentleman, what, um, uh, Rick said earlier about, I wish I had this 20 years ago. So rewinding the hands of time is often like going back in time and looking at our former selves in this relationship. Uh, why is it that we just overlooked this stuff? We all do it, men and women alike. Why is it that we're in this relationship early on, probably for a period of years, and we just ignore thing after thing after thing and just in one ear out the other and just continue on with the relationship? Why do we do that? Um, Basically, you know, I have an answer to this. Um, it's a combination of a couple of different things. In broad terms, I'm sure it's a combination of a thousand different things, but in broad terms, two big things. One is, um, all of us when we're in the early stages of a relationship are kind of under a spell. You're in love. Mother Nature takes over. Mother Nature wants you to procreate, make babies. I know some of you are a little too old for that. Some of you are birth control, some, and that's kind of a moot point. But Mother Nature doesn't know, doesn't care. All it knows is, look, see that woman here and see that man there? And it floods our brains with chemicals in our body, and there's hormonal changes, and dopamine, serotonin, all these other things all work in concert to make us hyper, almost infatuated with the other person. Hypersexual, yes, it's a component of it, um, and very, very attached to them. We don't want to let them go. And that again kind of puts you under a spell. You're drunk, in essence. You're love drunk, lust drunk for us dudes. You've always— you've heard the term some men say, thinking with our little head, meaning we're not thinking rationally, we just want woman sexually. That's a component of it, but we also genuinely fall in love and emotionally attached and so forth. So those little red flag thingies, they're not even there. They're just— they're not even there. At all. Like, we don't see them, we don't hear them, we don't— I mean, there may be a little part of our hind lizard brain that's like, uh-oh, look at that, but it's drowned out by the noise of all this love that we're under, right? Okay, so that's like basically every human has that. We all have experiences in that, falling in love, and then you break up later and you go, what was I thinking? You weren't thinking, you were feeling. And when you're feeling, it just wipes out all the rational thought stuff, right? So there's that component. The other component is Combine that with, um, I'm gonna make a big assumption here. A lot of you on this call, dudes that have been there, done that, right? The dudes that are sitting there smiling and nodding, going, yeah, yeah, I was with a woman, cheated on me with 19 different guys, did all this stuff, drugs and blah blah blah, her family was a wreck, I just ignored all of it. Um, what amplifies this red flag ignoring behavior is your own personal baggage. The shit that you put up with as a kiddo, the shit that you sat back and watched as a kid, what mom and dad showed you as a young man, like, here's how couples interact with each other, here's how couples fight, here's how couples interact sexually, romantically, here's how they resolve things, here's all the crap that, um, she puts up with and he puts up with, and you sit back and just watch all of this and you're basically being trained. To the point where you invite chaos into your life. You don't feel normal unless you have that form of chaos that you learned as a kiddo. So you just tend to gravitate towards what is familiar to you. And a lot of you gravitate towards chaos and broken individuals because you were raised in a broken, chaotic environment. So you go out in the world saying, hmm, looking for chaos, and you run into a completely normal, secure girl, and you're like, 'Yeah, not gonna cut it.' And then you look at Miss Kinda Crazy Broken, who also comes from another broken, crazy family, and you're like, 'Yeah, this one feels more familiar, feels more comfortable. It doesn't really— she doesn't really hurt my ego as much as Miss Normal over here, because Miss Normal over here shines a light on a lot of my inadequacies as a human. But this one makes me feel— I recognize this feeling here. This one feels comfortable to me.' And oh, here comes the new in-love chemicals, and away we go. That's what I've seen over and over and over again. Um, and, uh, yeah, T-Dub says, I had no experience with red flags and crazy behavior, no reference point. So T-Dub, are you saying— um, I'm not saying this is what you are saying, but another version I've heard is I've talked to some men who come from perfectly normal, and they will explain the family that they come from. Mom and Dad have been together for 60 years. They're a very loving couple. We have an extended family, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, great-grands. We all get together. It's a wonderful family. And then they unfortunately run into Miss Trouble, who treats him like a king. And he's like, this is wonderful. It's hypersexual. It's super attached. It's loving. I guess this is what relationships are all about. This is great. And he doesn't have the life experience to recognize he's with somebody who was, quote, love bombing him. And this is very, um, not very normal, healthy behavior. This is a little much. He's just like, this is just what relationships are like, right? He's kind of naive in that way. And then, um, maybe his whole family will be like, we don't know about this one, John, be careful. And he's like, ah, you're all being crazy, she's a doll, she's— this is 'You're all just trying to stop me from being happy. I love this woman.' And it all blows up in his face, and everybody's like, 'See, told you.' Um, that happens, and it's just his naivete. He doesn't know any better. I've seen that before. Um, Brett says he continued working on it, suffering. Apologize, I'm missing comments as I blab on. Uh, CLD Gaming says, 'Older kids can see the dysfunction. I also wish I had found the group 20 years ago. We got married at 23 years of age. We were too young.' Been there, done that. Marriage number one. It was what you did back then, and now young people wait longer. It seems they do. Hide and Watch says, yeah, I wish I had the book 15 to 20 years ago. Hide and Watch from YouTube, thank you, brother, appreciate it. Um, CLD Gaming, uh, you like my analogy that I did in a video about the young men in the stadium who choose not to marry? I can explain that one a little bit further for folks. Very, very good explanation. Thank you, Brett. And T-Dub says, 100%, but my family liked her. All right, so she fooled them as well. Are you— so you were kind of naive and she fooled everybody. Um, there are some people with some personality disorders like borderline, uh, narcissistic personality disorder that falls under the category of Cluster B personality disorders. You can Google that to learn more about that. And they tend to be kind of a chameleon at the early stage of the relationship. Everyone's like, lucky you, man, you found a good one. She's amazing. She's a doll. She's great. She's High five, brother. She's pretty, she's beautiful. Obviously she loves you. I don't know what you did to deserve that. And then it all just blows up once you start getting comfortable and things start getting real, and you're like, oh. And everybody's like, dude, we didn't see that coming at all, man. Feel sorry for you. I've heard that one. Um, Rick says, uh, Rick from Facebook says, I was definitely the red flag of the relationship. Interesting. My mom divorced when I was 3 and dad was an ex-1-percenter. From the sea. Oh, was that a, uh, like a 1% or like a bike gang, motorcycle gang thing, right? Um, they all told my wife to beware. Basically it was Easy Rider meets The Flying Nun. So you came from the dysfunctional family and your ex was Miss Normal, is that what you're saying? Um, and then T-Dub says, uh, she and her family full fooled us all, and it's clear to see now. It's hard to see coming. Well, live and learn, right? But T-Dub, in, uh, in hindsight, you look back and go, yeah, there was that one thing, and then there was that other thing. Yeah, man, she did say that one thing, and I did notice this about her family. But again, you're in love, and you, you just, you put blinders onto everything. Oh well, thinking with your little head combined with your, your romantic brain, and then away you go. Been there, done that. But we all learn. Live and learn, that's right, he says. Uh, let me go back to CLD Gaming talking about my analogy of the young men in the stadium. Um, the internet is a wonderful thing in a lot of ways. It's changed our world completely. One way is that it allows people to communicate and share their life experiences to the point where we're like, wow, the guy in you know, extreme southern end of South America, his life experience is very similar to mine, and he's saying this and this. And men all over the world get to talking, and, uh, men and women alike. And the men that get to talking, a lot of these youngish men on the internet that have a lot of time on their hands and they're not very good at relationships and they don't have a lot of relationship experience, they all get to talking to each other and they all share their experiences, and it's not so good. And then they, um, run into a lot of information online about, uh, women suck and this is how women suck. And, and they may seek out a lot of information and they want to make relationships work and they kind of push aside a lot of the quote red pill stuff and they get to more of this more centered stuff, of which I would like to say, maybe it's a little egotistical on my part, I'm of that camp, you know, more down the line, down the middle. Everyone has a, has a point here. Let's try to look at this in a more intelligent, thoughtful way, the whole relationship game. And I did a little video on, uh, we need to be more, more realistic about the state of marriage and when it comes to sex and marriage more specifically. And I pointed out a lot of factual statements. You may debate me, Google. This isn't me saying this. This is me again, iterating a lot of stuff that I've learned over the years of doing this Dad Starting Over stuff, is that for most of us, If you're in a long-term, committed, monogamous relationship, from the male perspective, the women in our lives— and I'm— I just said from the male perspective, but there are books by women on this. Esther Perel, Wednesday Martin, our own buddy Dr. Psych Mom talks about this quite a bit. And that is the, the, uh, the phenomenon of when entered into a long-term, monogamous, safe, secure relationship For most women, they will report, even with everything remaining the same, love their husband to death, everything's great, he hasn't necessarily changed in any way, he's still the same dude, let's say, right? In that scenario, um, they will say, you know, my libido was— when we first met, we're dating and so forth, and libido is another word for sex drive— was like an 8 out of 10. And then after we got together and got hitched and things got comfortable, it got cranked down to like a 5. Out of 10. And some women are very cognizant of that, and they go, I don't know what's going on with me, I just— I'm not myself anymore. And they start looking around for answers. Then they have kids, and then it goes to like a 3 and a 2 and a 1. And for some women, the knob just gets ripped right off the machine, and they're like, I'm not a sexual creature at all anymore. And a lot of men are like, what just happened? This isn't my wife, this is weird, I don't like this. And they go looking for answers, and they find my material, Dr. Psych Mom's material, Esther Perel and others. And they come to the conclusion of, wow, it seems for a lot of women, not all, for a lot of women, uh, the sexual desire gets cranked down quite a bit when they get married and have kiddos. And to, for us men to see some semblance of the old her takes work. It takes know-how, it takes some knowledge, and, um, it's no easy task. And it's certainly not as easy as it was in the dating phase. In the dating phase, for some men, it's as easy as, hey, who are you? You're cute in a way. 'Give me your number and then we'll meet next Wednesday.' And wham bam, thank you ma'am. Now I have a woman on my roster of 12 different women that I can be with, right? That world of the roster of so many women, casual sex, it could be argued it's a very shallow, simplistic mindset. It can't last long. Eventually you do get tired of it, believe it or not, and you realize there's more to life than that. Well, that being said, um, that world, those men— it's relatively few men, small percentage of guys, but it's a lot of guys are talking to each other on the internet now. Going back to my original point of the internet, people are communicating and all these young men are talking to each other and they're trying to figure out how to maintain that hypersexual state and getting their quote needs met as young men. And they're all talking to each other and finding my material and Dr. Psych Mom's material and other people's material, and they all come to the conclusion of Maybe we shouldn't marry because when we do, we lose that part of us, and that part of us is like really, really important, and I would really like to maintain that if at all possible. Maybe I should just at the least hold off on the marriage thing for a while. And then the analogy I gave that CLD, um, is referencing here is that I said, let's pretend that you get 100,000 young single men in a stadium and I put on a presentation and I show them my material and Dr. Psych Mom's material and so forth, and I say, see, the libido is gonna— it's gonna dip quite a bit when you have kids. It's gonna make it even harder. And if sexual, uh, frequency and quality is very important to you, well, you got your work cut out for you because it's not going to be easy, man. It's going to be tough. And I said, I, I think a lot of people would be very surprised at the percentage of men that would get up from the stadium and walk right out and say, never mind, I'm not going to do that. That makes a lot of women go, wait, what? It's that important to them. It is. Um, and it doesn't help that they're all— all these young men are talking to each other and comparing notes. And it doesn't help that people like me and Dr. Psych Mom and others are going, well, there's some truth to all this and there's some science behind it and it's going to be tougher. All these men are like, wait, what? No. And they bow out of the game completely for a while, if not forever. That's not good. It could be argued for society as a whole, um, we do better when people get hitched and have kids and settle down. You've heard that term, men and women alike. But we have one guy that's running around screwing a bunch of young women, and a bunch of young women saying, yahoo, this is fun. Could be argued not the best thing for society overall, um, but that's what we're seeing. And the analogy I use with the stadium is that not every guy gets up and leaves. Some guys stay put and go, no, I want to work on this, and I want this I want to do this long-term monogamy marriage thing. That's more important to me than screwing around with a bunch of women. And unfortunately, the women go, yahoo! And they go into the stadium, so to speak, and they look around and they go, this is who's left? Ugh. And they don't like them too much. And so they go back out and they try to convince the other guys, don't you want to come back in here and do the marriage thing? And what they're hearing is a lot of men go, no, no, we've seen the presentation that Ralph Brewer put on. We're not going to put up with that shit. It's unfortunate, and, um, we need to do a better job of selling the concept of marriage, of figuring out how to make it work so everyone is happy. And that's tough. And for what I've seen, the grand epiphany in all this is it ain't for everybody, dude. It's never been for everybody. Unfortunately, we tried to force a lot of people into it, and we ended up with a lot of divorce, and we ended up a lot of very unhappy ladies stuck in marriages that they really want to be in, and a lot of men saying, screw this, I'm gonna go get a girlfriend or two or three. I often point out that a lot of people go, it wasn't always like this. My grandma and grandpa were together for 1,000 years and they were happily married. But here's what you don't realize. Go to Grandma after Grandpa dies. And I've had some men, by the way, who did this. Hey Grandma, now that Grandpa's gone, can I ask you some questions? Were there ever times when like Grandpa, like, you know, I hate to say it, like fooled around or something? You know what Grandma says? We don't talk about that. And the guy's like, whoa, seriously? Like, yeah, we don't— I don't want to talk about that. Pretty common. I think a lot more common than what we think. And I always joke around about, uh, we have those little hidden skeleton in the closet secrets in the family. Like, uh, no one ever talks about how, uh Uncle Bob has jet black hair and everybody else are pasty redheads in the family. We don't, we don't talk about that. We all have those little things in our family we don't talk about. This whole, uh, people were always together forever and ever in strict enforced monogamy, as they call it, and everyone was happy— not quite. It's just everyone was much more hush-hush and pre-internet. We didn't all talk about it. Um, Something from Nothing says that his wife tried 8 years ago to right the marriage ship. I was checked out. Thinking that the wife was off her rocker. This last summer, she stated to me, quote, I can't believe this is my life. In my mind, she should have said that, but from a positive view. I have found the dad starting over. He lost 50 pounds, working to retake leadership role in my family. She says she does not want things to change. It's too much work. But yeah, more confused than ever on this. She tried 8 years ago to right the marriage ship. But you were checked out thinking that she was off her rocker. So was there some mental health issues there? Um, I have more questions than anything after reading this. So she had genuine mental issues, she tried to fix things, she said, I can't believe this is my life, meaning good or bad. You know, you could be good, like, I can't believe this is my life, or I can't believe this is my life, like, meaning the life that you two had together. A lot of questions here, buddy. Maybe you need to start at the beginning, just kind of spell out exactly what's going on here and where you're at. It's good that you're going through all these positive changes, but now I have all kinds of questions. Maybe I missed something from earlier from all my blabbing. I apologize. Um, we are going on, folks. It's already been an hour. Wow, that went by fast. Does anybody have anything else before we hang her up here? I like to keep these at about an hour or so. Anything at all? Please do not be shy. Does anybody have anything to share? Uh, the DSO Fraternity is the name of our private group for men only. Check it out, dsofraternity.com or dads startedover.com. Um, the private group is the thing I'm most proud of. That's where we, that's where we really get stuff done. You know, if you're looking at my public Facebook page or YouTube comments, for example, and you're going, these are a lot of very bitter, angry dudes, Jesus Christ, um, and not a lot of creative anything, or, or what's the word, uh, constructive anything going on here. This is a lot of bitching and moaning. Um, check out the DSO fraternity. If you're a man. Sorry ladies, it's not for you. I'm going to put a link here in the comments. You'll see it in the comments on Facebook. You'll see in the chat on YouTube. It's a link to get 1 month free of the DSO Fraternity. You can sign up. You do have to give a credit card because if you stay on past the month, it will automatically charge you. If you're in this group and you're doing the test drive and it's— the month is coming up and you're like, I don't think this is really for me, I don't really like it all that much, Cool, just let us know, we'll cancel you. We don't want to just steal your money. We're hoping that we have guys that want to be in the group, that want to learn from others, that want to help others, be part of a brotherhood of guys, if you will. Um, we have guys from all over the world that are loving it, and they pay. Usually what happens is a guy will go 1 month, 2 months paying, and then they'll say, can I just pay for a year up front? It's cheaper that way on a month-to-month basis if they just pay for a year up front. It's as if they get like a month or 2 for free.. And then some guys say, I don't like the idea of regular payments at all, but I don't want to lose this. Can I pay for a lifetime deal? Yeah, we have that option. You can pay one lump sum and you're good to go. You don't have to worry about anything anymore. Um, there are fees involved with coaching. That's a separate thing from the, uh, DSO fraternity. Uh, the good news is that if you're a member of the DSO fraternity, it's like half the price for coaching as compared to the general public. So there's more benefits to joining other than just talking in live Zoom meetings, live discussion forums, other than the DSO Frat other than the articles, other than— oh, you get all my books for free, by the way. I didn't mention that. All my 4 books that I talked about, you can download a PDF version of all those books, or you can listen to the audiobook version for free. So a lot of cool stuff, and we'll continue adding to the benefits. We have some members here who can attest to it's a pretty good group. DS— CLD Gaming asks, do I find that men who successfully turn their marriage around generally have a higher income. I have wondered if that removes one additional marriage stress. I have not personally seen— now you're making me go, hmm, I wonder if there is a trend to that. But money is a stressor for sure that you've, you've pointed out here. So if we can eliminate that stressor, for sure. Also, higher income guys— not to badmouth in any way my lower income guys— tend to be Higher educated, not always. And we know statistically, if you have a higher education level, you have a higher chance of staying married. So we have that working for us. So income goes along with X number of other things, which could all contribute to a positive, uh, marriage in that way. And the potential of turning a marriage around, I would assume, and all that other stuff. So it's hard to say. Um, what else here? Darren says, awesome stuff, keep the faith, man. Thank you, Darren, appreciate that, brother. Um, CLD Gaming says that the frat has been a lifesaver for him. Well, excellent. So good to have you. To know that other men are out there in a similar situation has been a godsend. I have done coaching and this has improved my marriage. Little steps for us. Oh, very good. So I'm glad. So again, welcome. Thank you so very much. Uh, we welcome any new guys that want to join us. I put the link up there, try it out for free. What do you got to lose? You can join for a month, take in all my books. Here I am. This is not good financial advice, you know, from my perspective, but I'm just— from your perspective, guys, check it out for a month. Worst that happens is you join in on some conversation, you join in on some live meetings, you can listen to the archive of some past meetings that we've had, myself and other guys on the team. You can even maybe have a coaching session or two at half the price. You can listen to all my books if you want wanted to, or download them. And then at the end of the month, you may be like, I don't want to continue with this. You're absolutely out, $0. Now why would I say that? Because I, I'm, I'm so sure of this and so proud of this DSL Fraternity thing that I know if I give it to you guys for free, you're going to say, oh, I don't want to give this up. This is like less than a dollar a day, and look at all the, the shit, good shit that I get for my money. Guys tend to stick around if they join, and that makes our group grow and grow and get more and more strong. And, uh, We need more and more good dudes out there that want to, uh, work with other men on all this stuff. And we talk about everything from parenting to career job stuff to the sex and marriage thing to the divorce thing to trying to stay married and doing good things for you and your wife and everything in between. Dating, all that good stuff. All that stuff is covered in the group. DSOfraternity.com. Check out that link that I put up there, how to get 1 month for free, the DSO fraternity., and we would love to have you guys. So if there's nothing else, I'm going to call her quits, ladies and germs. DadStartingOver.com, Dad Starting Over on all the social media channels, whatever you call them. Appreciate all of you, and I look forward to seeing some of you guys in New Orleans, Louisiana here in a couple days. Wow, that came fast, didn't it? For our 4th annual Bro Fest gathering, as we call it. And our guys in Australia, they're going to have their gathering that they call Mate Fest. They're going to have that here coming up here in October, so that'll be here before we know it. So our group is big and it's growing. We'd love to have you. DSL Fraternity, check it out. All right guys, thank you all so very much. I appreciate each and every one of you, and I will see you on the next one. A toodaloo!